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Thinning

I have 633 posts here but i’m not sure if WordPress is counting drafts. Although I haven’t written much here in the last year or two I still think about doing it almost every single day. Then I get all busy or lazy and go to Facebook to look for some quick way to say what might have been a blog post. And it’s been great, I love the interactions I have there and it’s so easy to post a quick photo and and and.

Not much writing gets done. Not here (my word gym), not anywhere.

A lot has happened in the last year. Our youngest, Spanky has finished high school and moved away to go to college. Fortunately she chose a school in Austin, a place we’ve always wanted to move to when the kids are all grown up. So we found a place in Austin in October and have slowly been moving things over there, waiting for the spring market to put the house near Dallas up for sale.

Actually it is a little more complicated than that, we have another college-aged daughter living at home who just finished her first two years at community college. She’s going to move to Austin as well and try to get into one of the universities near there.

Right now I’ve got to get the house ready for market. It seems like an impossible task. With each previous move we got a larger house and these new places were just a block from each other. This time we’re downsizing. And that is where the pain comes in. We’re not pack rats, but hell, it just seems like I never had to get rid of anything to fit a new thing in these places.

It’s not a big deal with things like furniture, we’ve been selling that stuff on Craigslist pretty easily. It’s going through boxes of drawings and notes my kids did when they were growing up. Letters from my parents and friends from far away, things my mom and dad made for me, things I made for my kids (I used to sew a lot). I can’t keep everything, I don’t have the room, so I’ve got to thin them out.

Some of these things have been in a box for over ten years. I have long forgotten memories that go with these things, they flood my brain and emotions and I fear if I threw the item away the memory will go with it.

And I miss my children being children. I wish I had a stronger version of myself to go through these things. I know once these things are gone I’ll have an overall feeling of lightness because all of these things are heavy.

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7 thoughts on “Thinning”

We have spent the last week looking at this issue, moving after the kids have moved on, and everyone sees it so differently. Some want to sell the empty nest, others want to hold on to it for grandchildren. So funny that it once seemed parenting ended at 18!

Since my workplace closes from Christmas to just past New Years and I tend to stay at home during that break, it has become my Winter Cleaning Ritual to not let things accumulate – including paper memories such as they are. Since the days of the So Cal wildfires when we all learned how to pack up and get out of our houses in less than an hour, I’ve had plastic containers stored under my bed for those Must Not Lose trinkets. If something is not worth fitting in there, and if it doesn’t fit, it has to go.

All of which, of course, does not make it any easier to let go of our children being children – as I watched 15 drive away for his 1st driver’s training – you know I was picture the curly haired toddler he used to be.

Thanks Christina. I wish I’d kept up with sorting through junk as you did.
” as I watched 15 drive away for his 1st driver’s training – you know I was picture the curly haired toddler he used to be.”
You do that too?

We have been in this house for almost 13 years, and I’ve often worried that the rate of things coming into the house exceeds that of things going out. I did just manage to donate a large pile of things. The truck came and took away probably 20 bags and boxes of things. I feel so much lighter now.

My kids are young, so we have fewer years of accumulated projects and things. I’m trying to work out a system of taking photos and then recycling. Digital space is cheap. My hard drive may be cluttered and full, but at least we are not physically buried. (Or not as much. Because we still totally are.)

By the way, it’s so nice to see you posting again! Congratulations on your big move. I hope the move goes well. I’ve never been there, but I hear great things about Austin. In fact, my sister-in-law is moving there, so I may see it first hand some day.

Ohhhh, now see that is the thing that has been scaring Blane for years. Me? I never really thought much about the day we’d be downsizing. I just didn’t expect that.
I’ve been doing that this past week, taking photos of things I want to keep but don’t have the space for, it is a wonderful solution.